CITY ROOM; Piano Was Meant for School, But Principal Took It Home

By ERIC P. NEWCOMER

Published: June 12, 2012

People take all sorts of things from the workplace: pens, paper, maybe a stapler now and again, but what about a grand piano?

The principal of a city adult-education center in the Bronx admitted to doing just that.

In 2007, a teacher at the Bronx Adult Learning Center on East Tremont Avenue donated a Weber grand piano to the program. In 2009, the principal of the center, Amoye Neblett, hired movers to take it to his home in Brooklyn, Mr. Neblett stated in a settlement with the city's Conflicts of Interest Board that was announced on Monday.

It was not immediately clear what model the piano was, but even the smallest Weber baby grand is five feet long and weighs about 600 pounds, a Weber dealer said.

Mr. Neblett, who according to his personal Web site grew up listening to the keyboard giants Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver, enjoyed the piano for only a few months before the teacher who donated it noticed it missing, according to a report by the Education Department's special commissioner of investigations.

When she asked Mr. Neblett about it, he told her ''I took it home,'' the report states, adding that when she told him she considered his actions theft, he replied in an e-mail:

I will deliver the piano to your home or whatever else you want but it cannot go to th [sic] school. The only reason it was removed was because we cannot keep it there. Nothing was stolen from you and I appreciate you trying to resolve this in a civil manner.

His lawyer then sent her an e-mail saying that Mr. Neblett would deliver the piano to any location in the city except the learning center and that if her instructions for delivery were not received within three days Mr. Neblett would consider the matter closed, the report states.

Instead, she contacted the authorities. Mr. Neblett told them that the expansion of a program at the learning center had meant there was no more room for the piano there, the report says. But in 2010, he agreed to return the piano to the Department of Education and to resign, the conflicts board said.

Mr. Neblett, 58, whose 26-year career in the public-school system also included stints as assistant principal at an elementary school in Brooklyn and 15 years as a classroom teacher, has also agreed to pay the conflicts board a $1,000 fine, the board said Monday.

In other actions against city education workers, the conflicts board announced Monday that it had fined a teacher $1,000 for making a bogus parking placard for her personal use.

The teacher, Maryann Mercado of Public School 75 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, borrowed one of the school's 11 official parking placards and photocopied it. Armed with her fake pass, Ms. Mercado was able to park her personal car in the restricted zone near the school without getting ticketed.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.